This letter is from Jorg Austen, factory engineer (and a nice guy) to Alex Buller (RIP) who was President of the now defunct Porsche 914 Club. Click to view attachment

That's really cool. Thanks for sharing.

....

From the proverbial "horse's mouth" - but will it dispel the naysayers & alternative facts types out there!?

Thanx Perry!

I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. Austen in 1997 in Stuttgart, he led our group on the tour through the assembly plant. Glenn Stazak and I were also given total access to the factory archives, which was very cool.

Yes there will be nay sayers, and this argument is certainly not new. Charley Davis' argument was that Jorg is a lifelong employee of Porsche, and part of the "inner circle" so to speak, and would always defer to promote Porsche. A position not without merit, but based on conjecture, and not meeting with anyone at the factory or archives.

I tend to side with the guy who designed part of the car, and was on the team that developed the car. Furthermore there's really no solid proof anywhere to support arguments that 914 was not a factory design.

Some magazine article 35 years ago references Gugelot and it's easy to take that as the truth, even if it's not.

To quote Paul Harvey: "now you know the rest of the story"

Thanks for sharing very cool!

I spoke with Norbert Singer at the Petit Le Mans back in 2005 wearing my "914Club" hat. He looked at it and said "A long time ago". I asked him if it was a Porsche design and he said "Yes".

Thanks for sharing this Perry. But I have to ask ...

"The Porsche chief designer was Wolfgang Eyb ..."
What about Heinrich Klie? The Mythbusters thread promoted Klie as the "father" of the 914.
Does this letter debunk that, or is there a way for both stories to be true (i.e., did Eyb work for Klie or vice versa)?

Click to view attachment

That is pretty darn cool letter, thanks!

Speculation here, but my guess is Klie was body design and Eyb mechanical, which is where Jorg worked.

They both worked there during the same time.

And Klie's clay model looks very much like a 914.

Click to view attachment

from the November 1969 issue of Road & Track......

.....which happened to feature a cover story of the new VW-Porsche 914.

A quote from the author, Jonathan Thompson; "Dr. Porsche pointed out that the design of the 914 was entirely Porsche KG's..."


And on an entirely different note, the classified ads from that issue feature a 1957 Porsche Carrera coupe for $3500, a 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB for $8800, a 1966 Cobra 427 for $6600, a 1966 Mustang GT-350 for $2400 or best offer, and 6 (six!) Mercedes 300 SLs ranging in price from $5000 to $6500. Could anyone forecast what the market would become for what were then just "used cars". The height of incredulous was that back then a Ferrari 250 GTO could be bought for under $10,000! Who knew?

"Cheap" Porsche

I showed my dad this and he got upset. Now I can make fun of him whenever he raves about 914's.